Steven, Hold My Hand! by Toby Raines

On a Monday earlier this month, I walked over to the Village East Angelika to meet my friends Anthony and Megan. It was Anthony’s birthday, and we were celebrating in true film-prick fashion by going to the arthouse cinema to watch the 50th anniversary 4k re-release of Jaws. 

Jaws came out in 1975 and immediately revolutionized everything in the film industry, both creative and commercial. It was the first film in the United States to have a simultaneous nationwide release, and it popularized the term ‘summer blockbuster’, earning more money than any other film had in the history of Hollywood up to that point. It won three Oscars, one of which went to John Williams for his score that would live in infamy in every seventies kid’s brain. 

Jaws, it goes without saying, is an iconic movie. 

When I slid into the movie theater a few minutes late I noticed it was absolutely packed. On a Monday night. There were families with their kids, boomers who would have been in their twenties at the original time of release, as well as a couple of groups of twenty-somethings just like us. 

When we made it to the first jumpscare (the dead guy under the boat) the entire theater jumped in their seats. It felt like the category 2.5 earthquake that was caused by the Oasis concert. When Dreyfus and Lorraine Gary were quipping about the Police Chief’s silence the whole theater was roaring with laughter, not because of some ironic feeling that the nation’s sense of humor has changed so much since then, but in fact because the jokes are still funny now. Genuine laughs. When Bruce (the name Spielberg gave to the mechanical shark used during filming) explodes into a million pieces, the audience roared with applause so intensely I thought we were at the Venice Film Festival about to take part in a record-breaking, five-day standing ovation. 

I wasn’t being facetious (if just a tiny bit weird) when I left the theater, turned to my friends and said ‘what a fantastic cinema-going experience.’ They agreed.

We walked a few blocks to the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant – the windowless one in the back of the Ukrainian Community Center – to debrief the movie. We ordered some borscht and a few beers, and then proceeded to sit in silence for about five minutes.

See the thing is, we all agreed Jaws was an amazing movie, and that we had all thoroughly enjoyed it. But none of us had anything to say about it, other than “it’s great.”

While we sat there in silence and waited for our soup and listened to the twangy violin of the Ukrainian folk-dancing class that was being held next door, I remembered an interview with Terry Gilliam that popped up on my Instagram reels, in which he compares Spielberg to Kubrick. When asked what the difference between those two greats is, Gilliam says ‘Spielberg is more successful.’ I chuckled, but I disagree, I find that to be incredibly reductive. But Gilliam follows it up with something far more interesting. He says [about Spielberg’s films]:

‘...They’re comforting. They give you answers, always. The films are answers… you can go home and you don’t have to worry about it… the Kubricks of this world, and the great filmmakers, make you go home and think about it… I’d like to have a nice house like Spielberg, but I know which side I’d rather be on.’

Once again, I don’t agree with everything he’s saying here, I think he’s being way too harsh on one of the greatest directors of all time. However, it is true that Spielberg's movies leave you with answers as opposed to questions. That’s why we couldn’t think of anything to say in that restaurant other than ‘what a great cinema-going experience.’

Jaws got me thinking, what are the kinds of movies I want to make? As a writer/director, I want to make Kubrickian movies, movies that leave you with questions, that make you argue with your friends as you walk to the bar. Movies that present two or more lines of morality that are discordant but both justifiable, both easy to get behind depending on your values, upbringing, or even mood. 

But I also want to make movies that make people smile. 

I want to leave people with a sense of wonder, to transport them, to make them feel less alone. I want there to be no intelligence prerequisites, I want anyone with a brain and a nervous system to understand what I’m trying to say with my art.

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I always thought of Kubrick, and the average auteur, as elitist filmmakers. Granted, their films were always my favorite, but I felt like they were sometimes not clear enough to fully grasp. But then I stumbled upon what is now one of my favorite books – Easy Riders, Raging Bulls – in which the author Peter Biskind explains that Spielberg’s films have the effect of “infantilizing the audience, reconstituting the spectator as child, then overwhelming him and her with sound and spectacle, obliterating irony, aesthetic self‑consciousness, and critical reflection.”

This clarified exactly what bugs me about some of Spielberg’s movies, and it’s the opposite of what I initially thought: he holds the audience’s hands. Roger Ebert praises him for being a master manipulator of the audience.[1] Spielberg himself even said “Through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.” While directing the audience is one important tool in every great filmmaker’s arsenal, I think he underestimates his audience. In my very, very, VERY humble twenty-two year old opinion, movies that are designed to give every audience member the same exact viewing experience make me uneasy. It’s a form of perspective control. I want to go into a movie and be certain that everyone, or at least someone, will draw a completely different meaning from the images they see. I believe that a great film guides the audience insofar as to sit everyone at the same table, but not necessarily to sit everyone in the same chair. Not to have everyone have the same experience ‘at the same time’ to quote the man himself. That is why me, and Anthony and Megan, sat in silence. 

On its 50th anniversary, I am overjoyed that we as a nation remember Jaws fondly enough to bring it back. It’s better than any of the movies that have come out in the past twenty years that just have answers. It’s a relief to go sit in a cinema and really just enjoy a movie that gives you answers, especially if that movie is damn good and directed by Steven Motherfucking Spielberg. If the movie is good, we’re all happy – and Spielberg movies are simply always good. When they were coming out and I was a nerdy pre-teen, I went and saw every single Marvel movie (which by the end was like four or five a year) and absolutely loved them. I am not saying movies that pick you up and transport you for a few hours are not worthwhile, they are. 

However, Jaws also serves as a reminder that since the industry revolution that occurred as a result of its release, the other kind of movie, the kind that really makes you think, and makes you think differently to the person next to you, is on its way out, and that frustrates me. 

But is that the point of movies? Does everything have to be an exercise for the brain, something that literally speaking is ‘hard to watch?’ Maybe the auteurs ask too much of the paying audience: to not only spend two hours watching something that is challenging, but to then spend God knows how many hours afterwards trying to make sense of it and get the answer we understandably feel we deserve in exchange for our hard earned twenty dollars.

Furthermore, in writing this article, I almost prove myself completely wrong. Jaws made me think hard for weeks, hard enough to write about it and talk impassionedly about it to everyone I’ve laid eyes on since September first. But maybe that’s just the power of Spielberg.

[1] Ebert described Raiders of the Lost Ark as: “an out of body experience, a movie of glorious imagination and break‑neck speed that grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality two hours later—breathless, dizzy, wrung‑out, and with a silly grin on your face.” Despite his love for the way that Raiders transports you on a journey, Ebert is quoted by CNN as saying he doesn’t like being manipulated. Mr. Ebert, God love him, contained multitudes: “I prefer to be amazed by motivation, not manipulation.”